Navy releases partial reports on McCain and Fitzgerald

The Navy has released the executive summary into the accidents involving the USS McCain and Fitzgerald.

USS Fitzgerald

According to the report the crew of the Fitzgerald did basically everything wrong, including crossing the bows of ships in the shipping lane they were
in. As the ship crossed the shipping lanes, they failed to put the navigation patterns on the charts, failed to use AIS, failed to try to contact the
ACX Crystal, failed to refine their radar displays, and the watch standers were all, literally, looking the other way. At one point, they crossed
less than 650 yards in front of another ship, and at no point did the crew attempt to notify the captain, despite standing orders to do so.

As the Fitzgerald sailed into the busy waters near Japan it cut through a channel with specific rules for navigation, known as a a traffic
separation scheme. The ship did not have the navigation patterns on its charts and repeatedly drove across the bow of ships exiting the channel.

The Fitzgerald’s commanding officer was in his cabin prior to the collision, which took place at 1:30 a.m.. The report documents numerous mistakes
made by the officer of the deck, who is the main officer in charge of safe navigation while on watch.

At one point, the Fitz crossed the bow of an oncoming merchant ship at a range of less than 650 yards — fewer than four ship-lengths — but the
officer of the deck never informed the captain, a violation of standing orders that requires the skipper to be summoned to help oversee the hazardous
conditions.

USS McCain

The McCain had a similar situation with the crew screwing up by the numbers, but this time the captain was on the bridge the entire time. As they
heading into the channel, heading to port, the captain had been in charge for over four hours. He didn't order the sea and anchor detail until 6am,
instead of 5am, when he should have, to give the crew extra rest. He later noticed that the helmsman was having trouble keeping the ship on course,
so he ordered a second helmsman to help, by taking control of the prop controls. Instead they shifted the helm and speed controls to the lee helm,
which caused confusion and created the mistaken impression that they had lost rudder control.

Four minutes prior to collision the crew was troubleshooting a mechanical failure, when there wasn't one. The captain ordered the speed reduced to
five knots, but only the port shaft was reduce, leaving the starboard shaft at 20 knots. Steering was ordered shifted to aft steering, which wasn't
manned because they weren't at sea and anchor. In the three minutes before collision their steering configuration was changed five times.

It was just before dawn when the McCain headed into the Strait of Malacca, one of the busiest waterways in the world. The ship’s commanding
officer, Cmdr. Alfredo Sanchez, had been on the bridge overseeing navigation in the heavily trafficked area near Singapore for more than four hours
when the accident occurred at 5:23 a.m.

The failures on McCain began hours before accident.

Sanchez had decided to give his crew some extra rest and delayed orders putting his crew on what is known as sea and anchor detail, which requires
more sailors and puts the ship at a higher state of readiness. That includes a bulked up navigation team, a full suite of lookouts and a master ship
driver on the bridge.

It's a lack of training in Seventh Fleet. They've admitted that they push maintenance and training back to keep the ships at sea as required. They
see more sea time than any other fleet. Quite a few people have been relieved or told they are being passed over for what should have been their next
command.

Lack of training my ass! They literally did everything opposite of what they are supposed to do, almost as if they didn't have control of the ship. If
that was the case, do you think we would ever in a million years be told the truth?

Occams razor would say they didn't have control of the ship! How does refreshing training help with the most basic of tasks, like using a radio to
respond to the ACX Crystal? You are doing a disservice to the men and women of the US Navy by suggesting that they don't know how to do the simplest
aspects of their jobs.

Yes, because all military members do their job perfectly every single time, and never make mistakes. Occam has nothing to do with actual
investigation. Crews that are overworked, such as they see in Seventh Fleet are more likely to make mistakes than crews that aren't. Crews that
train constantly, unlike Seventh Fleet, are less likely to make mistakes.

Military crews are still humans, and they still make mistakes. I've seen some incredibly stupid mistakes made by military crews, such as putting your
NVG case in front of the control column to hold the elevators up out of the way, and forgetting they were there. Or pulling an ejection handle to
close the canopy and blowing it off the aircraft. Or turning too hard and causing a plane to crash. Just because they're US Navy doesn't suddenly
make them perfect.

Yes, because all military members do their job perfectly every single time, and never make mistakes. Occam has nothing to do with actual
investigation. Crews that are overworked, such as they see in Seventh Fleet are more likely to make mistakes than crews that aren't. Crews that
train constantly, unlike Seventh Fleet, are less likely to make mistakes.

Military crews are still humans, and they still make mistakes. I've seen some incredibly stupid mistakes made by military crews, such as putting your
NVG case in front of the control column to hold the elevators up out of the way, and forgetting they were there. Or pulling an ejection handle to
close the canopy and blowing it off the aircraft. Or turning too hard and causing a plane to crash. Just because they're US Navy doesn't suddenly
make them perfect.

What are the odds that everybody on deck doesn't know how to do their job? In this day and age where my freaking car GPS won't shut up about me
missing a turn, you expect me to believe a multi-billion dollar destroyer just accidentally runs into other boats.... TWICE?

So instead of a group of sailors who were, from all accounts, either 1) unable to follow procedure, almost as if they were not trained properly, or 2)
criminally negligent which leads directly to the death of their fellow sailors.

Some foreign power though, apparently, has the power to hack all the systems of the ship(s), including apparently, the brains of the watch standers,
and make the ship(s) crash. You do know, do you not, that the ships can be steered manually? So, too, can the engines... Why didn't they, in
essence, just unplug themselves from the "hacked" electronic brains, and use their own?? Which means looking out the damned window and seeing with
their own little eye-balls, the world around them.

Ill-trained, certainly ill-supervised, crews are almost certainly to blame, not some super-secret "enemy" computer hacker. Are there folks out there
with the wherewithal to do something like hack a warships systems--oh, yes, I suppose there are, but there are also folks within the military, rather
smart ones, too, who's sole job is to prevent such occurrences.

Bad training, and worse leadership, came together to create a situation on two ships that that same bad training was unable to handle.

Or super-hacker.

Bad training in an emergency will lead people to doing exactly the wrong thing at exactly the right moment guaranteed to make the problem worse. Ever
watch people drive on ice or snow? Car starts slipping/sliding, what does the driver, almost invariably, do? Locks the brakes up. Doing exactly the
wrong thing at the worst possible moment. What happens then? Collision with another car, moving or parked, or off the road--seldom anything good.

So instead of a group of sailors who were, from all accounts, either 1) unable to follow procedure, almost as if they were not trained properly, or 2)
criminally negligent which leads directly to the death of their fellow sailors.

Some foreign power though, apparently, has the power to hack all the systems of the ship(s), including apparently, the brains of the watch standers,
and make the ship(s) crash. You do know, do you not, that the ships can be steered manually? So, too, can the engines... Why didn't they, in
essence, just unplug themselves from the "hacked" electronic brains, and use their own?? Which means looking out the damned window and seeing with
their own little eye-balls, the world around them.

Ill-trained, certainly ill-supervised, crews are almost certainly to blame, not some super-secret "enemy" computer hacker. Are there folks out there
with the wherewithal to do something like hack a warships systems--oh, yes, I suppose there are, but there are also folks within the military, rather
smart ones, too, who's sole job is to prevent such occurrences.

Bad training, and worse leadership, came together to create a situation on two ships that that same bad training was unable to handle.

Or super-hacker.

Bad training in an emergency will lead people to doing exactly the wrong thing at exactly the right moment guaranteed to make the problem worse. Ever
watch people drive on ice or snow? Car starts slipping/sliding, what does the driver, almost invariably, do? Locks the brakes up. Doing exactly the
wrong thing at the worst possible moment. What happens then? Collision with another car, moving or parked, or off the road--seldom anything good.

That is, exactly, the scenario that played out on those ships.

The reason I don't buy the training is that we aren't just talking about one person not doing their job. We are basically talking about all of the
people not doing a job properly. You have multiple people and redundancies on the bridge and not one mofo up there knew how to avoid another massive
ship? A multi billion dollar destroyer is being driven by a Uber driver now manually? No GPS? No collision warning? No communication? Even if
we buy all the tech was turned off, we still have to believe that none of the dozen or so people on the bridge knew how to avoid the collision and all
of them just happened to be incompetent at the same time. Then we have to believe this exact scenario plays out TWICE.

Nah bro... gtfoh which that nonsense.

Sorry, my spidey sense is not buying the "official story". I'm not saying the ship was hacked or anything, but that I don't buy this was just some
accident as a result of bad training.

Why didn't they, in essence, just unplug themselves from the "hacked" electronic brains, and use their own?? Which means looking out the damned
window and seeing with their own little eye-balls, the world around them.

Why, because of poor training, lol

No member of the bridge watch team, including the commander and executive officer, had the proper training to operate the ship’s control console in
event of a steering failure.

You couldn't even begin to imagine how many times I watched, first hand, people that were well trained and experienced, or were even fresh out of
tech school and should have known better, completely ignore their training and do something so incredibly stupidb it wasn't funny. Usually with really
bad results.

You are under the impression that it takes the whole crew to screw up like this when the reality is that four or five people is all it takes. One
person not reporting something, or thinking that something like AIS is active, when it's not, and they're in trouble.

And exactly how do you think they get experienced in those situations? In know you seem to think they don't need to constantly train, but if you don't
train for an emergency until it's muscle memory, when you get into an actual emergency, you screw up.

This content community relies on user-generated content from our member contributors. The opinions of our members are not those of site ownership who maintains strict editorial agnosticism and simply provides a collaborative venue for free expression.